Friday, February 14, 2014

The Kunu Kunu Police!

Someone
keeps sitting on the log outside our gate, smokes and leaves their cigarette butts
on the ground.

I hate
trash. Especially non-biodegradable trash like cigarette filters. I just hate
trash of any kind.

Back in
the 1970s I was sitting our VW hatchback at a 7-Eleven store waiting for my husband
to come out. Before he did, some beefy, bearded guy walked out, opened his pack
of cigarettes and threw the wrapper on the ground – right next to the trashcan!

I
couldn’t help myself – I yelled out the window, “Litter bug!’ He looked at me
as if I were speaking Farsi and so I yelled again, this time louder, “Litter
bug!” He ignored me, got into this car that was parked next to ours and reached
down beneath his seat and raised his hand – pointing a gun right at me! A gun! Wouldn’t it have been easier to
pick up the damn trash?

I, of
course, ducked.

My husband
came out just as the guy’s car disappeared around the corner of the store. I
was shaken, but I didn’t tell my husband about it for fear he would go all macho on me and chase the idiot and get
us both shot. I kept my tongue.

Kept it
for three decades. Until I reached Sri Lanka and saw people, oldsters and youngsters,
throw trash out bus windows, as they walked down the road. Everywhere. Never
once using a trash bin. Oops, there were
no public trash bins anywhere when I got here in 2002.

This
trash obsession of mine began on a trip from Michigan to Florida, taking old,
country-roads. It was along one route through the hills of Tennessee, which
followed a deep river gorge, that I saw trash hanging off trees like laundry –
caused when the river’s level had risen to peoples’ backyards, where they tossed
their trash; their old iceboxes, old mattresses, bottles - you name it, they
threw it. The river carried their trash downstream but left tell tail signs on
the trees. The landscape was sumptuous; beautiful valleys, green moss-covered
trees – totally marred by people and their trash.

What I
came to realize is the people of Tennessee didn’t have a trash system to
haul away their garbage. Neither did Sri Lanka. But that didn’t mean people
couldn’t put their gum wrappers in their pockets to throw away later at home.

When I
first came to Sri Lanka, I stayed for a year and a half at a hilltop hotel,
doing photographs for them and PR work, in trade for room and board. It was in
the process of being built. They, too, had a trash problem. Each department;
reception, housekeeping, the Ayurveda health center, the kitchen, threw their
daily trash down the hills bordering their offices. I couldn’t bear it. I told
the hotel management that foreigners would never stay there with all the trash
around. Never!

So, they
made me in charge of the trash. I became the trash police – the kunu kunu police - and went around daily
talking myself silly to get people to stop throwing out their trash. It dawned
on me that they, too, needed trash bins, so I convince management to buy bins
and place them around the hotel. That wasn’t enough. We needed a place to dump
the bins. So, with a bit of bartering with the local Municipal Council, the
hotel staff painted the town’s watchtower in turn for permission to dump the
hotel’s waste at the city dump.

But with
what?

More
pleading and I got a tractor and 3 workers to make daily rounds of the hotel
and haul the trash to the dump. The Kunu Kunu Police was now a department of
four and much envied by other staffers, because I also got them uniform shorts
and T-shirts and rubber boots! We were cool!

But not
everything was cool. There were 200 workers at the hotel; construction and
staff. Not one put their trash in their pockets. I took it on to inform them
about helping their planet. Big task.

Each
morning I’d walk the hotel to check what department was throwing out what. One
fellow went with me who spoke enough English to translate, along with my hand
gestures, that I was not happy that they were continuing to throw trash down the
hill. They ignored my translator and laughed at my attempts to speak their
Singhala language.

I
visited them every morning for a year and a half. Somehow, the message got
across and the bins filled daily. I wanted to thank the workers for their
efforts so I organized for all 200 of them to go to the rooftop directly across
from the water tower at 5PM sharp. Good light at 5PM. Good luck getting all of
them there on time!

With a
view of the ocean and the entire hotel, I was perched on the tippy top of the
water tower watching the rooftop where they were to meet. Two by twos they
came. Ten by tens. Even the hotel dogs climbed the stairways to the rooftop. And
they gathered by 5:15PM!

It was
grand!

I
printed out 200 of the rooftop photos and personally gave each worker their own
print, telling them that it was my gift to them in exchange for stop throwing
down kunu kunu!

One can
only hope they remember the crazy Kunu
Kunu Policewoman that terrorized them. Perhaps they might even be pocketing
their gum wrappers to keep their island clean.

There are now trash trucks in most major cities of all the island. My own neighborhood gets pick-up every other day. --If I could
just get those smokers who sit on the log by my front gate to stop throwing
down their cigarette butts!